ly one reason why our aesthetic sense is not
adjusted to find more beauties than we do in the physical aspects of
New York City. Deep in our consciousness, if not rather our
subconsciousness, lies the ache for green vistas and gardens, for low
sky lines and quiet streets. When we speak of the picturesque in New
York, we most often refer (aside from the obviously striking aspect of
the lower city from the harbor) to the old brick houses on Washington
Square or the quaint streets of Greenwich Village. Yet we do both the
city and ourselves an injustice by this more or less unconscious
attitude. Let us consider picturesque to mean what is shaped by chance
and the play of light into a beautiful picture, and, if we but walk
the town with eyes upraised and open, we shall see the picturesque on
every side.

There is the Plaza Hotel, for example. Every New Yorker and every
visitor to New York knows it,--a great, white, naked sky-scraper, with
a green hip-roof, rising close to the Park and St. Gaudens' golden
bronze of General Sherman. But how many know that it is probably the
one sky-scraper in the world which can gaze at its own reflection in
still water, and that to the spectator looking at it over this
water-mirror it becomes a gigantic but ethereal Japanese design, even
to the pine limb flung across the upper corner?

They say there is an hour at twilight when all men appear noble, and
all women beautiful. Certainly there is such a twilight hour when New
York City is veiled, oftimes, in loveliness; and most lovely at this
hour is the Plaza mirrored in the pool. The view is not easy to find,
unless you are one of those who know your Central Park. But a little
searching will uncover it. You will see in the southeast corner of the
Park a lake, and just beyond this lake you will find a path turning
west. That path leads to a stone bridge over a northward-stretching
inlet of the pond. Cross the bridge a few paces and turn your face to
the south. At your feet the bank goes down sharply to the still, dark
water. Across the pond the bank rises steep and rocky, covered with
thick shrubbery and trees. Shooting up apparently out of these trees
is the white wall of the Plaza, three hundred feet into the air, and
down into the water sinks its still reflection, to an equal depth. It
rises alone, open sky to left and right, and there is just room in the
lake for its replica. The picture is impressive by day, but as
twilight begins to ste